Yu Hua: Boy in the Twilight: Stories of the Hidden China

I shook my head. “Man and dog can’t be husband and wife,” I said.

“As long as you’re clear about that,” said Mr. Chen. “In the future, if anybody calls you that kind of name, don’t do that ‘Mm, mm’ stuff.”

I nodded. “Mm,” I went.

“Don’t keep going ‘Mm,’ just remember what I told you,” he said.

I nodded and went “Mm” again. He waved me away. “Okay, okay, off you go,” he said.

I walked off, carrying my load, and the dog pattered along in front of me. It seemed to be putting on a bit more weight every day. Before long it had grown up big and strong, and it began to get ideas. Sometimes I wouldn’t see it for a whole day at a time, and I didn’t know where it had gone off to. It wouldn’t come back until after dark. It would scratch the door, I would open up, and it would slip in and lie down on the straw in the corner. It would put its head on the floor and look at me out of the corners of its eyes, and I would say, “The day before yesterday, when I got to the rice store, I turned around and you were gone, and yesterday when I got to the furniture shop I turned around and you were gone, and today when I got to the pharmacy I turned my head and you were gone …”

Before I finished speaking, the dog’s eyes would be closed. I had a think, and closed my eyes too …

As my dog grew taller, it got nice and plump, and when Pug-nose Xu Asan and the others saw me they would say, “Hey, halfwit, when are we going to slaughter the dog?”

They were drooling at the mouth. “When it snows,” they said, “we’ll slaughter it, add water and soy sauce, cinnamon and the five spices … Braise it slowly for a whole day. It’ll taste so damn good.”

When I knew they wanted to eat my dog, I quickly picked up my load and went on my way, the dog running along by my side. I remembered what they’d said, how they’d eat my dog when it snowed. “When is it going to snow?” I asked Mr. Chen.

“That’s a long time from now,” Mr. Chen said. “You’re still wearing a T-shirt. You need to wait till you’re wearing a padded jacket.”

When Mr. Chen said that, I didn’t feel so anxious. But what happened was, before I had started wearing a padded jacket, before the snow came, Pug-nose Xu Asan and the others already wanted to eat my dog. They got a bone and tricked it into Xu Asan’s house, and then they shut the door and closed the windows and started beating my dog with sticks, trying to kill my dog, so they could braise it on the stove for a day.

My dog knew they wanted to kill and eat it, so it hid underneath Xu Asan’s bed and wouldn’t come out. Xu Asan and the others poked it with their sticks, and it barked so loud I heard it when I was doing my rounds.

That morning I looked over my shoulder when I reached the bridge, and the dog was nowhere to be seen. In the afternoon I heard it barking furiously as I walked past Xu Asan’s house, so I came to a stop and was standing by the door when Xu Asan and the others came out. “Hey, halfwit, we were just about to look for you,” they said. “Hey, halfwit, hurry up and tell your dog to come out.”

They thrust a looped rope into my hands. “Put this around the dog’s neck and strangle it,” they said.

I shook my head and pushed the lasso away. “It hasn’t snowed yet,” I said.

“What’s the halfwit saying?” they asked each other.

“He says it hasn’t snowed yet.”

“What does he mean it hasn’t snowed yet?”

“No idea,” they said. “To know that, you’d have to be a halfwit too.”

I could hear the dog barking inside, and there were people poking it with sticks. Xu Asan patted me on the shoulder. “Hey buddy, hurry up and tell the dog to come out.”

They dragged me over there. “What are you calling him buddy for?” they said. “Cut the crap … Take this rope … and strangle the dog … You won’t? You’d better, or we’ll strangle you next.”

Xu Asan blocked their way. “He’s a halfwit. There’s no point in trying to scare him, he won’t understand. We need to trick him …”

“Tricking him won’t work,” they said. “He still won’t understand.”

I saw Mr. Chen walking over. He had his hands in his pockets and was walking slowly, step by step.

“Let’s just take the bed apart,” they said. “Then the dog will have no place to hide.”

“We can’t take the bed apart,” Xu Asan said. “The dog’s already in a panic. If it feels any more threatened, it’ll bite.”

“You dog, you mangy dog …,” they said to me. “Yeah, it’s you we’re talking to. Why don’t you hurry up and answer?”

I bent my head and went “Mm” a couple of times. Mr. Chen spoke up off to one side. “If you want him to help,” he said, “you need to call him by his real name. If you keep on using bad words and cursing him, he’s never going to help. You say he’s a halfwit, but he’s not always such a fool.”

“You’re right,” said Xu Asan, “let’s call him by his real name. Who knows his real name? What’s he called? What’s this halfwit’s name?”

“Do you know, Mr. Chen?” they asked.

“Of course I know,” he said.

Xu Asan and the others surrounded him. “Mr. Chen, what’s this halfwit’s name?” they asked.

“His name is Laifa.”

When I heard that, my heart skipped a beat. Xu Asan came up to me and put his arm on my shoulder. “Laifa,” he said.

My heart began to thump. Xu Asan, his arm around me, walked me toward his house. “Laifa, we’re old pals … Laifa, go and tell your dog to come out … Laifa, all you need to do is walk over to the bed … Laifa, just call it nicely now … Laifa, just say ‘Hey’ … Laifa, I’m counting on you.”

I went into Xu Asan’s bedroom, squatted down, and saw my dog lying prone beneath the bed. There was blood all over it. I called it gently. “Hey.”

As soon as it heard my voice, it scurried out and threw its paws on me, butting me with its head and chest, so my face was smeared with blood. It gave a baying noise, a baying noise I’d never heard it make before, and that upset me a lot. I reached over to give it a hug, and no sooner did I hold it close to me than they put the rope around its neck. With a tug they dragged it out of my arms. Before I realized it, the hands that were hugging the dog were empty. I heard it give a little woof, just a little woof, that’s all, and I saw its four feet scrabble on the ground for a little, and then it didn’t move anymore. “It hasn’t snowed yet!” I said, as they dragged it away.

They looked at me and laughed.

That evening I sat by myself on the straw where the dog used to sleep. I thought about the whole thing. I knew my dog was dead. I knew they’d poured water over it, and soy sauce and cinnamon and the five spices, and now they’d braise it over a fire for a day and tomorrow they’d eat it.

I thought about this for a long time. I knew that it was my fault the dog died. It got strangled because I coaxed it out from under Xu Asan’s bed. My heart thumped when they called me Laifa, and that was all it took to get me to do what they said. I shook my head when I remembered that, and shook it for a good long time. “Next time somebody calls me Laifa,” I said to myself, “I’m just not going to answer them.”

It was the middle of an autumn day. Sun Fu sat beside a fruit stand, his eyes squinting in the bright sunshine. He leaned forward, hands on his knees, and his grizzled hair seemed gray in the sunlight, gray like the road that lay before him, a wide road that extended from the far distance and then stretched off in the other direction. He had occupied this spot for three years now, selling fruit near where the long-haul buses stopped. When a car drove by, it shrouded him in the dust stirred by its passage, plunging him into darkness, and it was a moment before he and his fruit re-emerged, as though unveiled by a new dawn.